QQ Music () is one of the three Chinese freemium music streaming services owned by Tencent Music, a joint venture between

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...

and

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active use ...

. As of 2018, the service is set to reach over 700 million users with an estimated 120 million subscribers. The service in 2016 merged with China Music Corporation, owners of the second and the third largest streaming services known as KuGou and KuWo respectively. With this merger, QQ Music is the dominating force in Mainland China music platforms, commending (in 2018) a market share of about 75%. Outside of streaming, the service leverages its brand to the public through the annual QQ Music Awards.

Business service

QQ Music operates under a freemium business model in which basic services are free whilst enhanced features are available on a subscription. However unlike similar subscription service

, labels have the ability to restrict its content to be restricted to subscribing users (known as VIPs or green diamonds) or be purchasable on their website which usually costs around 19 to 20 yuan, artists using this strategy include Noah Cyrus,

Ariana Grande Ariana Grande-Butera ( ; born June 26, 1993) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Her four-octave vocal range has received critical acclaim, and her personal life has been the subject of widespread media attention. She has received ...

and

Taylor Swift Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bo ...

in which certain albums are restricted to be purchased only. QQ Music generally encourages users to purchase their VIP subscription service.

Accounts and subscriptions

As of March 2020, QQ Music offers three subscription types.

Listening limitations

QQ Music only operates in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

, however, for an uncertain amount of time, the free service was freely available to be used worldwide, and many international users used the service in order to circumvent paid services such as

Apple Music Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Appl ...

. In 2016, to strengthen copyright restrictions, QQ Music blocked international users, and users overseas will generally receive an error when trying to play music such as this one: '抱歉，应版权方要求，暂无法在当前国家或地区提供此歌曲服务' ('Sorry, this song is not yet available in the current country or region at the request of the copyright owner'). In 2017, Alibaba Music and Tencent Music had a deal to collaborate on music copyright allowing Alibaba Music service Xiami and QQ Music to share exclusive copyright deals. However, Alibaba Music has exclusive rights to certain

SM Entertainment SM Entertainment Co., Ltd. () is a South Korean multinational entertainment agency. It is one of South Korea's largest entertainment companies where it was established in 1995 by record executive and record producer Lee Soo-man. The company h ...

Korean releases (such as Luna, EXO, EXO-CBX, Girls' Generation) meaning that QQ Music and other competing service's users will not be able to stream these songs. The rights to SM Entertainment music were returned as a shared entity to QQ Music when Tencent Music Entertainment and SM Entertainment signed a deal in 2019.

Downloads

Downloads on QQ Music are limited to some songs for free users. Labels can control whether free users can download their songs on the free plan or restrict downloading to the VIP plan. Downloads on the free plan are

DRM-protected Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...

on both desktop and mobile whilst VIP downloads are free from DRM on desktops but are still protected over mobile platforms. When purchasing an album, a user is automatically entitled to the album and thus even if a VIP subscription ends, the user is still able to listen to the songs they purchased free of charge.

Technical information

QQ Music is

proprietary {{Short pages monitor